Positive
Only logged in members can reply and interact with the post.
Join SimilarWorlds for FREE »

76% of Brits support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

Despite the leaders of both major parties supporting the invasion and almost none of our media called for a ceasefire.
Ontheroad · M
I can't speak to the veracity of your claim, but I can speak to the ridiculousness of the thought that a simple ceasefire will solve anything.

Hamas has to be rooted out and destroyed, or they, and the other terrorist groups in the region, have to agree to lay down their arms.

Otherwise, a ceasefire is, for Israel, suicide.
basilfawlty89 · 31-35, M
@Ontheroad [quote]Other Arab nations are already involved. In fact, the other Arab nations, including but not limited to Iran and Turkey[/quote]

Turks and Iranians aren't Arabs. Their languages, history and culture aren't in the same family as Arabs who are Semitic.
milkymum1 · 31-35, F
@Ontheroad You can enver ever defeat an organisation like Hamas all it will do is push members into splinter groups who will be even worse.

We haven't leant anything from ISIS

even the IRA, Ulster Unionist people had to sit down to stop all the bombings which has on the whole been successful but even then a small part of the members didn't agree and broke off to form a splinter group

The ONLY way this will end is to treat both countries the same and stop siding Israel as being innocent since the agreement with Israel and the PLO Israel has slowly taken land built housing settlements on disrupted land and all been allowed to happen

Since the mid 60 over 1 million Palestinians have been arrested some for just using a Jewish Toilet, Currently Israel are holding (most without a trial) over 5000 Men, Women and Children of whom will be mistreated

Any Nation has breaking point and this was it

Also it also seems very strange that there's no footage from the music festival other than a few odd shaky mobile footage, where were the troops by the boorder? was this a case that benjamin netanyahu being in so many problems domestically that what better reason for distraction and to get the Israelis behind him rather than against him was to let this happen
Freeranger · M
@Ontheroad Straight up brother.
helenS · 36-40, F
It's so beautiful how British people, who are safe and who are not tortured and killed by Hamas butchers, provide Israel with sound advice.
Harmonium1923 · 51-55, M
@Burnley123 I appreciate your understanding of the suffering of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza and elsewhere. I don’t feel otherwise. But I do not accept that there is some kind of moral equivalence between Israel and the terrorists who seek to destroy that country and kill and torture Jews who live there and elsewhere. It’s not the same. It’s not even close. And as one of a small number of Jews left in this world, over about 40% of whom live in Israel, I fear more for our survival than I have at any point in my life. The horror isn’t limited to Hamas, but it sure didn’t take long after their vicious attack for the world to start blaming Jews and Israelis not only for defending themselves, but also for being victims in the first place. It’s not that different from the last 3,000 years but it’s really hitting home in a personal way for me now.

If I were leading Israel, I would try to spare civilian suffering, but I would not stop fighting until I had ensured the survival of my nation and my people. The truth is that the enemies of Israel use civilians as pawns and weapons. Everyone wants to blame the Jews for the suffering of the Palestinians. History suggests their real enemies are elsewhere.
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
@Harmonium1923 Thank you for being reasonable, even if we strongly disagree.

Your people have suffered great historic injustices and at the hands of white European non-Jews.

I'm very much an opponent of the far right and I'm motivated by the desire to stop war and suffering. I value all lives equally. On moral equivalence, I don't see violence done by the IDF as any better or worse than Hamas and I think hundreds of thousands of civilians are going to die.

I think your concern for Gazans is sincere and I don't think that you like Netanyahu. However, the current actions are going to kill a lot of people. Do Palestinians get security?

I also think that the aggressive actions of the IDF are going to increase the danger, even for Jewish Israelis. A regional conflict is a scary possibility. An invasion of Gaza is also going to lead to the deaths of a lot of young Israeli conscripts, as well as well as increasing the likelihood of terrorist retaliation from elsewhere.

I support Israel's right to exist and know that it was under immediate existential threat at least up until the six day war. If the power dynamics were reversed, I would absolutely be defending Israelis in Gaza from bombing and starvation from the Palestinians.
Harmonium1923 · 51-55, M
@Burnley123 I appreciate the civil discussion of a difficult and often emotional topic
I'm still trying to figure how and why Israel exists and if it's fair and if the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves and their land. That said, what they did was barbaric.
@Spoiledbrat A brief summary:

There has always been a Jewish presence in that area. However, the last time before the present when it was a Jewish state was under the Hasmoneans, which ended when Rome conquered it. Over the next two millennia, various external powers controlled the area, and Arabs from the surrounding areas gradually moved in. More recently, it was under the control of the Ottoman Empire (based in Turkey). Starting in the late 1800s, European Jews began moving to the area, purchasing land from the Ottomans or the local Arab farmers. After World War One, the Ottoman Empire fell and the area was taken over by the British, who promised a homeland to both Jews and Arabs. More Jews emigrated there, encountering resistance from the local Arabs who felt that this was changing the character of the area. Keep in mind, there had not been an independent Jewish country there for 2000 years, and there had never been an independent Palestinian one.

After World War Two, the UN voted to partition it into separate Jewish and Palestinian countries. Immediately after the British withdrew in 1948, the surrounding Arab countries attacked, and surprisingly, Israel not only survived, but captured more territory. This resulted in the ethnic cleansing of many Arab villages. This was followed by the expulsion of 900,000 Jews from their homes in the Arab world, and most of these went to Israel. This is why Israeli Jews look different from the Jews here in the US, most of whom are from Eastern Europe. In 1967, the Six-Day War resulted ultimately in Israel controlling the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Since then, Israel has established settlements in the West Bank (possibly illegally). In 2005, Israel dismantled all of its settlements in Gaza and turned the area over to the Palestinians, who elected Hamas. Israel retaliated by imposing a blockade. So here we are.

I've left out a lot of negotiations and missed opportunities but this is the basic story. One solution would be to create a Palestinian country (the two-state solution) but this is opposed by a majority of Palestinians. The goal of some Palestinian groups like Hamas, to take over the entire area and get rid of any Jews living there, is obviously not going to fly with Israel.
Thank you. That was a great summary @LeopoldBloom
@Spoiledbrat Thank you!
BEENOV · 51-55, M
Because 76% are Muslim or Muslim sympathisers
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
@BEENOV Troll.
This comment is hidden. Show Comment
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
@jshm2 We should and plenty of us do. I am pleased that people don't want war.

When the question is framed as "support for Israel" the results are mixed. However, given what 'support for Israel' is about to do, I would expect that to wane massively.
Freeranger · M
Anti-semitism is also at an all time high in GB as well, so I'm not surprised. I'm just wondering when Europe begins '39 all over again. Just wondering who'll be leading the charge in to the Sudetenland this time.
As an American veteran, I along with shit tons of others am in full support of Israel, but they're not reporting that either so there you go. What we're receiving here in the news is just how much, of both bodily threatening and hate speech (what happened to our vaunted "hate speech" laws kids? I guess that's applicable only for certain groups 😏) is being spewed at jewish students on our college campuses and in which, new slogans of "cleansing" have entered the collegiate lexicon from these university pro-Palestinian groups. Tenure be damned, kick the marxist anti-semitic professors off of our campuses. They're no longer teaching anything other than how to eliminate individual expression, and anti-semitic rhetoric while in it's stead, a policy of Introduction to hate thought 101 was created and began festering a long time ago.

From my perspective, kill Hamas, which is funded and trained by Iran. Do that first, and then I suspect, a two state solution, while difficult at first,[i] is[/i] possible. Israel can co-exist with Palestine.

By the bye......call it paranoia or whatever, but my response is not a personal attack on the author of this thread.
Northwest · M
How do you explain the UK's unanimous political leadership's decision to go this route?

Canada is also not moving to ask for a ceasefire, only for preserving civilians' lives. Trudeau is not in the war business.

I think there's an agreement, behind the scenes, to push for removing Netanyahu post war, and forcing a 2-state solution.

FYI: both France and Canada confirmed their independent findings, indicating that the British Anglican hospital was hit by an Islamic Jihad misfired missile. They join the US, British and German in this assessment.
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
@Northwest Our foreign policy consensus has been very pro Israel for a long time and also falls in with the US on everything.

You probably know, but the EU political class is divided on this issue.

On the hospital. Channel 4, which is reputable, discredited IDF claims about the missile's origin. I'll read into what you say though.
Northwest · M
@Burnley123 The situation is very complex.

The Obama and Biden administrations, are not pro Netanyahu and his policy of driving Palestinians out. In fact, Netanyahu is one of the few world leaders, who has not been invited to the White House, specifically due to this.

The UK shadows the US's position.

However, both the UK and the US support Israel, as they should, as one of the states in the 2-state formula.

The left, should also support the state of Israel in a 2-state solution.

The left agenda: women's rights, democracy, LGBTQ rights, etc. As a leftist, would you want to be in Tel Aviv, or Tehran? or Cairo, or Damascus, or Amman, or Khartoum, or...

The only place that's close, would be Beirut, but in fact Lebanon is multiple countries. In one part of the country, beaches are, like Cyprus, clothing optional, and in another part, women are forced to wear a Hijab to the beach. You can't beat the SPF factor, but that's not what it's about.

The Arab street irony, is that they're cheering Hezbollah and Hamas, all the while forgetting that Hezbollah, Putin and Assad killed nearly 1 million Syrian civilians in an ongoing war, while weeping over Gaza civilians killed by Israel. Yes, every life counts, but...
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
@Northwest I do support a two state solution. My only problems I see with that are logistical, not moral. The number of west bank settlements has increased massively since Oslo. However, if there is a way of working it then I support it

Leftist often get called out for being purity tests and being unable to compromise etc. My pro Palestine stance isn't because I'm unaware of Muslim counties views on gay rights but because the bigger picture (in my view) means siding with an oppressed and occupied people. Someone to me the point that Hamas would want to destroy Israel and all Israeli Jews.. I don't disagree. If the power dynamics were reversed and Israelis were the occupied people then I would be defending them against the a Palestinian authority who cut off supplies and bombed them. Fwiw, I would live in Tel Aviv, if I had to pick a ME city. I'd have to keep quite on my views, of course.

I don't think that the democrats like Netanyahu at all and I'm sure they privately want him gone. I also think that they believe Israel is taking too far in Gaza and that they are concerned with Netanyahu's legal reforms. I'm sure they side with the liberal protesters .

However, unless a hard stance is taken against the Israeli actions, I believe that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will die. That is my prime motivation in this.
Convivial · 26-30, F
Possibly because pollies don't get sent to war and war is good for newspapers... Or am I being too cynical🤔
Convivial · 26-30, F
@Burnley123 that was the other option...
This comment is hidden. Show Comment
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
@LvChris Corbyn is now a relatively peripheral figure in UK politics, though he still has his fans and I am one of them. He has been the lead speaker is a few pro Palestine demonstrations in London.

If Jez was still labour party leader, he would be calling for peace and being accused of anti-Semitism by the UK media. He'd probably also be currently facing another coup from labour MPs.

I hope that current events force some of my compatriots to re-think their views on the (mostly dishonest) labour anti-semetism claim. The ford report showed that this was a faction football and the al- Jazeera doc illustrated how and also Israel's involvement. Both were ignored by our media and remain unknown to most of the public
smiler2012 · 56-60
@Burnley123 as usual we the voters are being treated as plebs by our politician who cannot or do not want to see common sense and the suffering and the killing of innocent people in this crazy war in the middle east
Bumbles · 51-55, M
Bit late for that I’m afraid. The Hamas attack made status quo ante impossible for Jews.
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
@Bumbles It's not impossible.
HannahSky · F
A poll? Why would the media call for anything?
SW-User
There is no clear way forward in this.

It needs level headed people to think it through. Probably at the United Nations. And some rather unpleasant Nations need to be included.

The unelected Hindu prime minister should keep out of it. He represents no one.

Compassion and patience is needed, but I see little if it.
[quote]almost none of our media called for a ceasefire[/quote]

Why should media call for [i]anything[/i], one way or the other, rather than merely [i]report[/i] on and investigate events?

[sep]

In regards to the rest of it ...

Seeing as how external forces have been shaping this region ever since the Ottoman Empire I don't see why external forces can't just force (after securing Israel's nuclear weapons) both Jews and Muslims/Arabs to get along in a single, unified state, a democracy rather than some ethnosectarian apartheid nonsense. Muslims/Arabs in particular already have plenty of ethnosectarian states to choose from as it is, and going back to antiquity I believe what we consider Palestinians today (not necessarily in the sense of the original naming of "Palestine" by the Romans) are really just Arab immigrants to what was Canaan after the Muslim conquest of the region (in what, the 6th century CE I think?). There is no actual legitimate "Palestinian" claim to the area, any more than there really is any valid Jewish / Israeli claim to the area, and certainly no valid claim to existing Palestinian homes by rando Jews from Long island who decided to move and steal someone's home with the blessing of the Israeli government. Moreover, if I'm not mistaken, both Jews and Arabs ethnically / genetically are descendants of Canaanites, so screw any unilateral claims to the region by either contemporary side.

At the same time it's really bonkers for anyone to live in the Levant / Mesopotamia / the Arabian peninsula, Arizona, et al., when it takes unnatural measures like desalination and irrigating literal deserts to even begin to make it habitable. Maybe external forces should just relocate EVERYBODY there to greener, more sustainable regions.

I think Zionists in particular are also unwittingly breeding more antisemitism, which is kind of ponderous for them to be doing, when considering how draconian antisemitism has been over the centuries without intentionally stirring it. And that will affect all Jews around the world, even those who are not on board with Zionism or the far-right, neo-ethnic cleansing extremists like Netanyahu.

 
Post Comment